Chapter ThreeBroadcasting Global Broadcast Highlights As well as being the most watched sporting event in history, the demographic profile of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games viewers indicates that there was a higher representation of female viewers compared to other major sports events, with 47% of the global audience being female. The information below offers a breakdown of the Beijing 2008 coverage highlights and viewing figures in key markets around the world. North America NBC Universal, the rights- holding broadcaster in the US, enjoyed superb ratings for its Beijing coverage, reaching a record total of 215 million viewers by the end of the Games – the most ever recorded in the history of US broadcasting for a single event. The delayed coverage of the Opening Ceremony drew an average audience of 32.6 million, while Michael Phelps' historic eighth gold medal attracted the largest audience on a Saturday night in 18 years, with 30.6 million people tuning in. NBC's website, nbcolympics. com, also enjoyed record- breaking results, with 1.3 billion page views, 53 million unique users, 75.5 million video streams, and approximately 10 million hours of video consumed. In total, NBC offered its largest Olympic broadcast in history with a total of 3,600 hours of coverage being made available to viewers across television and the internet – more than the combined total of every previous Summer Olympic Games televised in the US. CBC were the official broadcaster of the Games in Canada, airing a total of 749 hours of dedicated Beijing 2008 coverage across four channels – two terrestrial and two on cable/ digital. In total, the level of television coverage of Beijing 2008 in Canada was 51% greater than the coverage enjoyed by Athens 2004 and 47% more than the coverage of Sydney 2000. 30IOC Marketing Report – Beijing 2008

IOC Marketing Report – Beijing 200831 BroadcastingChapter Three Asia and Oceania China witnessed unprecedented audience figures, with proprietary research conducted by the IOC post Beijing 2008 revealing that 100% of Chinese respondents had watched at least some coverage of the Games on television. An astonishing 842 million people watched at least some part of the Opening Ceremony on television, while the average audience was 496 million, making it the highest sports- related broadcast in the history of Chinese broadcasting. With over one billion people in China watching Olympic sports coverage at one time or another, domestic broadcaster CCTV dedicated five channels exclusively to Olympic coverage in order to cater for the huge demand. The proprietary research conducted by the IOC has also revealed that Chinese viewers watched an average of over two and a half hours of Olympic coverage each day. Similar interest was generated by online coverage in China, with over 153 million people watching live Olympic broadcasts over the internet and 237 million taking advantage of video- on- demand footage. CCTV. com also provided a mobile phone platform for Olympic coverage, which enjoyed an average of over 20 million page views per day during the Games. In Chinese Taipei, there were more coverage hours than ever before. The highest rated event was the live broadcast of the Chinese Taipei v Japan baseball match, with a combined audience of 2.6 million viewers. Rights- holder ELTA Technology Co. Ltd also offered the first online high definition broadcast in Olympic history. In Japan, action from Beijing 2008 was shown across ten channels, with almost 800 hours of coverage. The highest rated broadcast was the live coverage of the Opening Ceremony, which was watched by 25.9 million viewers. The highest rated sports broadcast, meanwhile, was the women's marathon, which was watched by 18.6 million people, followed by the softball final between Japan and USA, which was watched by 17.8 million people. This reflects a strong interest in women's sports in this territory. In South Korea, the highest rated broadcast was live coverage of the men's baseball gold medal match. With 6.9 million viewers tuning in to see their side triumph over Cuba, it was the highest rated sports broadcast of 2008. Baseball also received the most coverage, with 89 hours shown of the team's journey to the gold.